The famous three words we never hear enough of in our life. Throughout our life span we keep looking, waiting and hoping for something to take us, or lead us, to our true love. Have you ever wondered where we can find love?
What really is this word "Love" that we keep repeating to that someone special in our lives? How many times do you tell your partner "I love you"? Do you really mean it, or do you just like to hear yourself speak? Or, is it just being said because it is part of the vocabulary that your partner likes to hear, or that helps make them feel secure about themselves. So what’s love in the first place? What does love mean to you? Where can we find it?
Before looking for answers, we need to establish things ourselves and understand the meaning of the word "LOVE".
Love, in my point of view, is a flow of energy between two people that can bring awareness of their existence on this plane together, and this helps their relationship, and the harmony between them, to grow. If love is a flow of energy, basically it is not costing you anything so why do we hold ourselves back from truly sharing that love with someone else. Vulnerability, security, or maybe fears prevent us, but how hard are we really trying to achieve "true love"?
Love is already in your own backyard and we seem to have a hard time accepting this. To be able to accept love we need to learn how to give it in the first place. Love already exists in our "being" as humans share the most precious, intimate and secret jewel that is in our soul, our growth, and our spirit.
How much do you love yourself, or accept yourself for who you are? I am not introducing this question in an egoistic or selfish way. The amount of love you attract is really a reflection of the amount you give to others. We mirror what is already in us. You cannot get love from what you don’t have in yourself in the first place. The amount of time and effort you are willing to put into accepting, or inviting, true love to yourself is the same amount you are already accepting or giving to yourself? Are you ready to be in love? Ask yourself this question. Let go of your pride and fears, and invest in yourself. Think about it!
Do not allow one bad relationship to hold you back or stop you from investing in love again. Holding yourself back from loving someone is as equal to, or as important as, attracting love to your own life. We always look to receive love from another person but it is the contrary, you hold your happiness in your own hands. So open your heart and a new love will come and approach you. Don’t go too far to look for that true love. Just start searching for it within yourself!!! Sometimes it is hard to love ourselves because of different occurrences that have happened to us. We lose our own self-confidence and self-esteem. What I suggest, to renew your confidence in yourself, is a change of attitude. Appreciate yourself first, for who you are. Love yourself for who you are, and NOT for the way people want you to be, in their image. You are who you are, and if someone does not like you for what you are, then they are not the right one for you.
Now again comes the question - do you really mean it when you say to someone that you love him or her? Of course in my opinion, you need to distinguish between real love and infatuation. A person that showers his or her partner with material things or gifts usually has two motives. First, he or she is substituting one thing they can’t offer to their partner (love) and second he or she is hiding something from their partner (finding love somewhere else). Where am I going with this, just to say that love has no value attached to it? Either you give love from your soul or you don’t. Let’s just stop kidding ourselves by living a fancy unreal life. Love has no monetary value attached to it otherwise it would not be love. Love is a flow of energy so how can we place a price on it.
Until you find true love in your own heart, embrace every moment and enjoy your exploration of life and what it can bring to you.
Remember, love someone for who they are and not for the way you want them to be. Appreciate them as human souls. Happy discovery!!

Foreign polices of Capitalist nations are primarily driven by Economic interests, i.e. profit maximization, which translates to accessing new markets for its capital (Foreign investment), goods and services. International trade necessitates the lowering (or removal) of trade barriers and most importantly the willingness of the nations to trade, which would results in some form of negotiation leading to bilateral or multilateral treaties. If one of the parties decide to close its borders things can get nasty. As the British and the Dutch, East India companies demonstrated with the power of their navy in India, China and Indo-China, brutally colonising and plundering these lands for centuries in the name of “free trade”. Britain even took the role of a Mafia Drug dealer in China, by forcing opium on the native Chinese, a nation that was reluctant to trade with Britain. The US followed the same policies as its former colonial masters, by imposing its version of “free” trade by force on Korea, Central and South America (Declaration by the Monroe Doctrine, Spanish-American War), Pacific and elsewhere. “Free” trade has often meant imposing the trade by the barrel of the gun. Unlike the more cunning and deceitful former European colonisers the American culture is relatively more frank and hence the former US president Woodrow Wilson said:
“Since trade ignores national boundaries and the manufacturer insists on having the world as a market, the flag of his nation must follow him, and the doors of the nations which are closed against him must be battered down. Concessions obtained by financiers must be safeguarded by ministers of state, even if the sovereignty of unwilling nations be outraged in the process.”
As did William Howard Taft, secretary of war under the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, who explained that foreign policy "may well be made to include active intervention to secure for our merchandise and our capitalists opportunity for profitable investment."
Successive Presidents and Secretaries of the State have echoed this. Conflicts were not confined between the Colonialist and its colonies, often the Colonialists went to war with each other competing for market shares, the scramble for Africa in the 19th Century by European countries led to many successive wars, as did the struggle over sub-continent, South America and China. All these skirmishes eventually climaxed with First World War. Cost of the war led many of the nations to consider negotiating their differences rather then use the military option, this contributed towards the growth of various international political and economical institutions. Which was solidified after the Second World War. At the same time many of the academics argued for the advantages of free trade in generating wealth (theories of trade specialisation) for the trading nations and the harmful affects of closing the borders, the economic depression of the 1930s are often highlighted as an example of the consequence of raising the trade barriers.
So nations seeking trade liberalisation under the frenzy of Globalisation went to the recent WTO meeting held in the Mexican resort of Cancun, seeking to establish a consensus, which could have potentially lead to a multilateral agreement between its 146 members. The agenda was initiated at the previous meeting at Doha. However, few considered the main stumbling block -- the basic human nature of greed -- rich and the powerful wants to get richer, even it means making the rest of the world pooorer. A natural human trait that is not regulated but rather completely let loose within the Capitalist paradigm, it forms one of the basic pillar of the “free market” fundamentalism (Capitalism). Hence, the debased desires to covet the wealth of other nations, after securing the wealth from within by depriving the majority of its own masses of a decent living standards, are enforced by the deployment and careful marketing of fanciful terms like “free” market. Hence we witness the belligerence of the “freedom” fanatic fundamentalists. Even a cursory glance will tell you that it is “freedom” for and in particular its multinationals, and financiers not the freedom that is universally applicable to all human beings and nations. Never the less the member states hoped that everyone would see the mutual benefit and some form of compromise would be reached on that basis.
The summit was however a failure as nations walked out, unable to reach any agreement. However many viewed it as a turning point, as for the first time the poorer nations put up collective resistance against the three economic giants, US, Europe and Japan, this resistance led some to declare it as a form of victory for the poorer nations. The opposition was primarily provided by the G22 group of countries, which was led by the axis of Brazil and China, other less influential groups like the Least-Developed countries with its 49 members led by Bangladesh, African, Caribbean and Pacific Group (ACP) etc were also there to negotiate their own respective interests. The most contentious issue was that of Agricultural subsides provided by the wealthy US and Europe to their farmers, creating a glut in the market, lowering prices, with excess being dumped on the third world market eventually. Such practices are costing the poor countries in terms of millions in the losses of export revenue and may even ruin their own domestic market if subjected to dumping policies of the powerful nations. Another area of contention was that of cotton. Pakistan and south asia (produces 22% of the world cotton production) along with other African states again its primary victim. To compound the problem all these poor nations have huge debt servicing burdens to the IMF and World Bank. Far from conceding to the reduction of export subsidies to create a more equitable environment for the poorest countries, allowing them a chance to develop and grow, they went on the offensive asking for the adoption of “Singapore issues” (Originally proposed in Singapore back in 1996). Which would facilitate greater market penetration by the Multinationals and big Corporations. No surprise as they are the real beneficiary behind the scene. Singapore issue has four main components -- how countries deal with foreign investment -- standards of anti-monopoly and cartel laws (competition) -- government procurrement -- and trade facilitation (WTO jargon for easing red tape, customs and eliminating corruption). Naturally reservation from all the developing and least developed countries, people often forget, free does not necessarily mean fair. Countries with greater expertise, resources are easily able to out manoeuvre the poorer countries. Foreign investment can undermine a nations fiscal policy (sovereignty) as voiced its opposition. The latter learnt how the currency traders were about to destabilise the entire economy during the Southeast Asian market crash not too long ago. In essence such a formula would prepare the local industries to be controlled by the multinationals and thereby the colonising the countries effectively. “Free trade” is not so free after all.
Lessons
It was also an ideal opportunity for the US to convince the world of its current claim of being an ideal benevolent nation by unilaterally reducing its tariffs and subsidies to a reasonable level, which would have had an enormous positive impact on the poor countries. As one Bangladeshi economist remarked in the past that “third world needs trade not aid”. The initial loss of US businesses would have been more then compensated by the over all economic growth and an increase in confidence for investors and consumers. At the stroke of a pen, the US and Europe could have liberated millions out of poverty and desperation. Such conditions have been created through the policies of their financial institutions in the first place. This perhaps also really proves the point that Capitalist nations are not benevolent nations but rather only self-serving. When they tell you they want to liberate they are simply lying, current and historical evidences are overwhelming, if there has been the odd liberation (e.g. France, Western Europe and the Pacific nations during second the World war) it is only an unintended by-product of a struggle with rival competitor nations for securing (or defending) its own interests.
Solution or Suggestion
As for the poorer nations, they must have the will power to act in a collective manner in opposing the domination, who are only interested in getting richer at all costs and learn from its Colonial history. They must resist the seduction of short-term gains through forming bilateral treaties. The market shares of world trade for the poorer countries are continuously decreasing and the gap between the rich and the poor nations are ever increasing; the current model is not viable for securing their own interests.
Hence the poor nations should collectively look to create an alternative, and perhaps attempt to entice the oil rich Arab countries with long term visions rather then short term pragmatism.

If only a tiny fraction of social spending reaches the needy, at least it is doing some good, instead of defence spending that often literally ends up in smoke.
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."
Who said this ? No, it wasn't a pacifist like Gandhi or Martin Luther King. It was General Dwight David Eisenhower, the supreme commander of all allied forces in Europe during the most momentous war that the world has ever seen - World War II - and later the President of the United States. I don't usually start a column with a remark from someone else but I could not have found a more appropriate quote from a more authoritative source to warn the people and leaders of South Asia of the human cost of the arms race. If a general and a leader of a prosperous country like the United States could realise that spending on weapons steals money from the hungry and the needy, why can't the generals and leaders of two not-so-prosperous countries like India and Pakistan ?
I recently spotted an article in the New York Times that depressed me no end. It stated that India was the second-biggest importer of arms in the world in recent years and was expected to become the biggest importer in the coming decade. Indian defence spending has been rapidly increasing in the recent past. Arms imports is just one component of this increase. The elaborate nuclear strategic policy, for instance, that India has envisioned for deploying its nuclear weapons (with a land, sea and air-based triad) will, if implemented, gobble up untold millions of rupees in the coming years.
All told, the New York Times article estimates that India will spend at least $100 billion on defence in the coming decade. 100 billion dollars (4,800 billion Indian rupees) ! How many children could be fed in that amount, how many sick people given relief, how many schools built, how many wells dug ? At whose expense will all this spending on armaments be ? The poor and the destitute of India. And who will be major beneficiaries of all the arms purchases ? Weapon manufacturers such as Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, salivating at the prospect.
I can hear the counterarguments : As Indian hawk K. Subrahmanyam wrote into a well known Indian paper few years ago, a nation, like a family, has to feed and clothe itself but it also has to defend itself against its enemies. And, critics may ask, what about the corruption that ensures that only a tiny fraction of spending on social needs reaches the indigent ?
There is indeed a shameful amount of corruption in social spending. But the amount involved is very often peanuts when compared to the corruption in defence procurement deals. Bofors, HDW, Tehelka. Many of the names associated with defence scandals have almost become part of folklore in India, with huge amounts of money involved in defence-related corruption. Besides, if only a tiny fraction of social spending reaches the needy, at least it is doing some good, instead of defence spending that often literally ends up in smoke.
I do acknowledge that a nation needs to defend itself, but at what cost ? The primary security issue facing an enormous number of people in the region is that of finding job security enough to fulfil the minimum eating requirements for themselves and their loved ones. The states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar - among the largest in India - are a human wasteland, with educational and health indicators there being absolutely abysmal. They aren't the only examples. Almost a thousand infants have reportedly died of malnutrition and neglect in the first two months of this year in the state of Maharashtra - one of the richest in the country.
I don't mean to single out India. With the partial exceptions of Sri Lanka and the South Indian state of Kerala, the governments of South Asia have failed to meet even the basic needs of their people. No wonder that only parts of sub-Saharan Africa are less developed.
And I do not have to spell out for readers the dismal record of Pakistan in this respect. Pakistan spends a massive portion of its budget on defence and debt servicing, leaving little for the education and health needs of its citizens. Not surprisingly, on crucial indicators such as literacy, especially female literacy, Pakistan performs quite a bit worse than India. The point here is not to make comparisons but to underline that the people of the region are in the same dire straits. The questions then arises : What level of human misery is it moral for these countries to sustain to carry on with their current level of defence spending ?
"A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defence than on programmes of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."
This time, the words are indeed that of the great American pacifist and civil-rights leader Martin Luther King. Judging by his criteria, India and Pakistan may already be past that stage.

There are views that Pakistan should allocate at least 4% (Rs170bn) of GDP to education, which is more than our total defence budget (160bn for the year 2003-4). Is it time to redefine our 'national interest'?
Article 37-B of the Constitution of Pakistan states that it is government's responsibility to, "remove illiteracy and provide free and compulsory secondary education within minimum possible period." Since the formation of this constitution, successive governments have consistently failed to fulfill this responsibility.

Late Dr Mahbubul Haq(Former Finance Minister of Pakistan and world’s well known Economist) once said, "Political commitment for aspirated campaign to universalize primary education in the shortest possible time is still lacking in the country." Policymakers seem to have interpreted the above-mentioned clause to suit their own agenda and have not defined the timeframe of the "minimum possible period" for the removal of illiteracy.
Unfortunately, Pakistan has experienced countless unsuccessful educational reform programmes costing billions of rupees, aimed to increase the overall literacy rate; yet, they remain deeply entrenched in the quagmire of ignorance and illiteracy.
Pakistan has one of the highest numbers of illiterates in the world, and the current standard of education in Pakistan is really shocking. According to a study by Oxfam International, while the proportion of children are not attending school in South Asia will fall by half by the year 2005, Pakistan will account for an increasingly larger share of children not attending school. In fact, the study warns that by 2005, Pakistan will account for 40% of the region's children who are out of school, compared to 27% in the year 1995.
In 1990, Pakistan signed the Education for All (EFA) declaration. It took four years to sign it formally by the then Prime Minister of Pakistan, and a further six years for the ratification of the commitment to EFA at the World Education Forum, Dakar, Senegal. This reflects how our governments rush to sign international conventions and declarations, yet do absolutely nothing to ensure their implementation.
According to UNESCO's publication titled, 'Literacy Trends and Statistics in Pakistan', the enrolment rate in Pakistan did not exceed 60%, set against the target of 100% participation rate by the year 2000. This implies that 8m children between the 5-9 age group never enrolled in school, and half of the 12m that have enrolled may drop out before completing primary education.
Of all the E-9 countries, Pakistan has the lowest survival rate at the fifth grade, which will translate to 14m children out of school by the year 2003. “Government of Pakistan” has admitted in a very valuable data source for education, entitled 'Pakistan Education and School Atlas', published by newly established Center for Research on Poverty Reduction and Income Distribution (CRPRID), a research center under the supervision of Planning Division, that Pakistan has dropped far behind several other developing countries in terms of education, and immediate attention is required to catch up in this fast growing sector.UNESCO-CRPRID joint venture 'Atlas' has linked poverty and democracy with education and literacy. The report argues that the link between education and poverty is much debated. However, what is not disputed is the fact that the undereducated are disproportionately represented in the ranks of poor. Education gives people new skills and empowers them to take advantage of new opportunities. For countries, education raises productivity, innovation and output.
Education is important, above all, because it empowers people to take more control of their lives. At a personal level, it provides people with self-confidence needed to make their opinions heard. At a community level, it provides the skills through which people can protect their rights--to land, to schools, or to participation in public life. At a national level, it creates a demand to be heard. Without education, democracy is an empty shell.
There are some other commitments reconfirmed by the government at EFA-SAARC meeting, which requires revolutionary changes in policymaking to implement and achieve them. Elimination of gender disparity is one of the big challenges in this regard, which may never be achieved without introducing a co-education system from primary to tertiary levels. This task is politically difficult, as there is a chance of resistance from politico-religious circles of the country, who, at the moment, are very much engaged in decision-making.
Ministers for education of Saarc countries, through a ministerial meeting held last month in Islamabad, have advised the governments to allocate progressively a minimum of 4% of GDP to education. This, too, seems very difficult and an almost impossible task in near future because 4% of the GDP means that education needs approximately Rs170bn annually, and that ample amount, which is more than our total defence budget (160bn for the year 2003-4), would never be earmarked.Under the camouflage of 'national interest', invisible economic managers are not going to cut down defence allocations to meet this demand.
A meagre amount of Rs3.1bn has been allocated for the development of education sector in this year's budget, compared to previous year's allocations of Rs2.7bn. According to the latest economic survey, in the year 1995-96 the total allocations for education sector were equivalent to 2% of the GDP. In the year 1996-97, they were raised to 2.62 %, but when the military government took over in 1999, these allocations were reduced to 1.6% for the year 2000-01, and were slightly increased to 1.7% of the GDP for the fiscal year 2003-04.
The education sector is facing a huge gap between rural and urban areas as well, similar to the rest of the social sector components. In every programme, which aims to bring reforms and to increase overall literacy rates, policymakers give priority to urban development in terms of allocations and projects. As a result, in the year 2003, the estimated rural literacy (40.91%) is less than that of urban literacy (68.74%). Although the UNESCO Pakistan report reveals that growth rate for female literacy has nearly doubled, still the gap between the two genders is very huge. Estimated figures for 2003 show that female literacy rate is 38.57%, while male literacy rate is 61.93%.
If we compare female literacy rates of urban and rural areas, the gap is still larger--61.89% urban literate women and only 27.06% rural literate women. Another evidence of the increasing divide between rural and urban development is that of 21 districts where literacy is very low. Only two of these districts are urban-based. Gujarat and Jhelum had their status changed due to very high literacy. There is a need to further explore such success stories and what factors lie behind such rapid achievements through research and analysis, and replicated in areas where there is low or very low levels of literacy.
Policymakers and planners have been emphasizing on investments in higher literacy education, instead of primary education, to achieve set target. Low levels of investment in basic and primary education, successive failures of promises made in every plan, and the practice of missing well-marked deadlines, have created a credibility gap. Information technology education--which is more or less a completely urban-based education--is enjoying a larger chunk of the budgetary allocations as compared to formal education sector.
Planners are unable to understand the reality that increasing monetary allocations to formal and informal education, with special focus to the rural sector, will only lead to an increased growth rate of literacy. This year's announced Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) is also an evidence that higher education and money-oriented IT sector has been given much importance than the people-oriented formal education sector. PSDP figures show that higher education sector, including IT sector, has been allocated Rs6.5bn, while the formal education sector is left to pick up the crumbs, with Rs3.1bn. It is being claimed that the formal education sector allocations rose from Rs5.5bn in 2002-03 to Rs7.5bn in 2003-04, which translates to a ratio of merely 4.7% of the total allocations for development sector.
Rural literate candidates who are competing for jobs in public and private sectors, for admissions in standard educational institutions that are again situated in urban areas, find it impossible to survive due to the fact that the rural areas are facing deprivation in every social sector. The only system that saves them from complete isolation is the quota allocation, which prevails in public sector jobs and in educational institutions; yet it, too, is arguably unjust.
Another very important and often unnoticed reason affecting and discouraging the rural literate population is the command over spoken and written English language, as candidates with better English language skills are given preference to those who, albeit talented and educated, are rejected.
In Pakistan, formal schooling is a two-tier education system, each representing two different classes. The standard of education for the rural poor is very shabby, while urban areas enjoy the luxury from well-paid teachers to furnished accommodations. Disparity is also evident among urban-based primary schools in the shape of government's primary schools and model schools. Officers and members of the elite class usually do not want to enroll their children into ordinary schools, identified with federal government's primary schools. The building, furniture, facilities, fee structure, method of teaching and admission procedures of elitist schools and educational institutes create an inequality in our education system.
This kind of unjust dual policy can never provide a level-playing field to the poor population. Many rural-based upper middle class parents want to move to urban areas only to provide competitive schooling to their children, which further widens the rural-urban gap.
Education is fast moving towards commercialisation, as the state is also encouraging this trend. Latest reports reveal that at middle and higher secondary schooling levels, private schools' ratio, compared to public sector schools, is 49% and 42% respectively. The dropout rate after completion of public sector primary schooling is also very high. According to UNESCO report, some 73.6% dropouts are unable to get admissions to next level of schooling. Poverty and unavailability of middle schools are the reason for this high dropout rate.
It is alarming that the targets of private sector education in our country are the middle, upper-middle and higher income groups, whereas the rural population and lower classes are struggling to provide good education to their children.
Privatisation of education sector is not a negative approach because it promotes competition and it ultimately raises the standard of education and efficiency at every level. But in our society, where the economic gap between the upper and lower class is rapidly widening, and middle and low income families are forced to shrink their entertainment budgets to avail basic necessities of life, education may no longer be on their priority list.
Private educational institutions in the Punjab are bound to maintain a 2% quota for poor students at every level, but there is no check in this regard that they are following the rules. This quota should be enhanced to 15-20% with increase in fee structure to accommodate the urban-based middle and lower classes, and that amount should be spent indiscriminately. Again, the question remains how the rural education system can be improved to bring them to the standards of urban schooling.
It is criminal injustice that 95% of the population is suffering at the expense of the remaining 5%. As a result, the country is robbed of its best minds. For intelligence, of course, is not restricted to any one class or caste.

Global imperialism and the world's people.

Because international finance capital requires stability at the core, all the important capitalist powers endorse the crucial political and economic positions taken by the United States. But the Americans are not providing stability to world markets, even as the countries of the South fall prey to predatory capital. As the global economy crushes the poor beneath its heel, the welfare states of the underdeveloped world are further weakened, public services less accessible, employment more insecure and income disparities accentuated.

The contradictions of a rapacious imperialism are making themselves felt more acutely, but the ground needs to be prepared for a resistance movement across the countries of the South.


Two features define the capitalist world economy at the start of the 21st century. The first is the continuing, indeed overwhelming, significance of imperialism as the defining feature of global economic relations, with the term broadly defined as the struggle by large capital over control of economic territory of various types. The second is that this current imperialism is different in several crucial ways from that described by Lenin nearly a century ago as the monopoly stage of capitalism. To some extent the differences are simply the result of history, the evolution of both the institutions and processes of capitalism. But they are also the result of the effects of the recent processes of deregulation of trade and capital markets as well as other forms of economic liberalisation (constituting the essence of what is typically called "globalisation" which have given the new imperialism its cutting edge.

In terms of the current world economic trends, therefore, we can identify a number of important differences from the imperialist globalisation of the late 19th century. These include: the implications of accentuated internationalisation, the concentration of both production and finance, the greater domination and changed nature of finance capital, as well as the effects on inter-imperialist rivalry (or the lack of it). Further, in the present day, multilateral institutions and rule-based regimes are used to further the aims that in earlier periods of history were resolved through more direct militaristic or political means.

There is also the changed nature of the systemic instability of global capitalism and the new forms of economic territory that are currently being contested. Technological changes have furthered the process of global corporate dominance as well as allowed for the possibility of confronting it at an international level. The implications of the global spread, privatisation and concentration of media industries, meanwhile, add another dimension to the current imperialist regime.

It is obvious that the processes of concentration and centralisation of capital, as well as the internationalisation of production, have gone much further, with some important implications. The recent phase of globalisation has been marked by some of the strongest and most sweeping waves of concentration of economic activity known historically. Looking at the multinational firms, vertical disintegration of production has allowed parts of the production process to be relocated and geographically separated, but this has been associated with greater vertical integration of the control and ownership) of production.

In addition, the past decade in particular witnessed a wave of cross-border mergers and acquisitions across not only major manufacturing industries but even in the service sector and in utility provision. The increased concentration of economic activity in general could reflect the recession and slump in recent years: concentration is always more marked in the downswing phase of economic cycles. This process should not however be misinterpreted to imply that the links between multinational conglomerates and their home governments have disappeared: they may appear to be more tenuous, but nevertheless still exist and continue to influence geopolitical and economic strategies of the major capitalist powers.
Internationalisation is, of course, most marked in finance. The domination of financial flows in cross-border transactions, as well as the greater role played by speculative elements and the separation (and to some extent supremacy) of finance capital over productive capital, are too well known to require further discussion. However, some of the more significant outcomes of these processes may be noted.

They include the enhanced differentials in speeds of adjustment between capital markets and the markets for goods and services, implying both more rapid changes in terms of financial variables and more accentuated effects on real economies. The speculative capital flows play a destabilising role, leading to more volatility of relative prices in general and periodic crises of varying intensity in particular economies. There are constraints on national economic policy-making, especially in the fiscal and monetary arena in almost all countries, and one is confronted with the heightened inability of states (independent of political persuasion) to ensure basic needs and minimum socio-economic rights to all citizens. The need of finance to constantly, if temporarily, discover new avenues or emerging markets for investment, ensures that deflation is not a uniform process across the world economy, but is always accompanied by a few pockets of capital-inflow-led boom.

The domination of finance capital has had an impact on the nature of inter-imperialist rivalry as well. The point is essentially as follows:
when finance capital, independent of national origin, seeks to ensure the stability of its investments, it will be especially concerned about some degree of stability at the capitalist core, notably in the United States government and private securities. This means that(notwithstanding the recent and continuing decline of US stock markets, the move away from US financial assets and the associated decline of the US dollar in world currency markets) there will be attempts to maintain some degree of stability in terms of the most important financial assets available, and therefore to reinforce the geopolitical arrangements which underlie such stability. One important reason for the success of imperialist globalisation has been its ability to draw local elites and middle classes across the world into its own ranks This requirement creates a different source of pressure from that determined solely by US military domination. It means that in crucial political and economic areas, the important capitalist powers tend to act together or at least implicitly endorse the positions taken by the US, whether in the World Trade Organisation (WTO) negotiations, or in the use of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to determine country policies to directly or indirectly benefit US-based capital, or in the "war on terror" and the treatment of so-called "rogue states" and so on. It also means that US unilateralism in economic and political matters tends to be accepted (if not condoned), whether in terms of allowing the continued use of unilateral protectionist measures such as Super 301, or the US Farm Bill, or in terms of pushing for greater enforcement of multilateral liberalisation in precisely those sectors in which the US economy is perceived to have competitive advantage, or in terms of military engagements with what it chooses to define as "rogue states".

The new imperialism, in addition to utilising new institutions and international rules and protocols to its own end, is also about the struggle to control newer forms of economic territory. This is not to deny the continuing significance of economic territory as traditionally conceived, in the form of natural resources, markets and labour. Indeed, control over natural resources "particularly energy and oil resources" remains central to imperialist preoccupation. This is demonstrated by a number of recent and current events: the significance of the proposed (and soon to be constructed) oil pipeline through Afghanistan to the US military intervention and ongoing geopolitics of the region; the (failed) attempt to instigate and support a military coup in Venezuela against a president elected by a huge popular margin; the US administrations continuing obsession with forcibly instituting regime change in Iraq using whatever means possible. While these are in fact the most blatant political expressions of imperialism today, it is in the area of developing new markets that the economic implications are most pronounced.New markets for the core capitalistsNew markets are sought to be developed and made accessible in two ways.

The first is the opening up of existing markets in developing and formerly socialist countries through the processes of trade and investment liberalisation, using the agencies of conditional lending by the IMF and World Bank and, more recently, the rules and dispute settlement procedures of the WTO. Such opening up, especially if it involves the relative de-industrialisation of the newly liberalised economies, contributes new markets for manufactured goods and services for the core capitalist countries.It is surely not an accident that, despite fears of manufacturing jobs being exported from North to South, in fact the manufacturing trade balance of the South with the North remains negative and indeed the deficit has been growing. Associated with this is the lowering of world prices of Southern exports, as more and more developing countries are forced to increase export volumes either to repay debt, or to pay for more imports, or simply because they have been told that it is good for them to do so.

This in turn provides the related advantage of cheaper imports to the core countries, not only of raw materials and tropical agricultural commodities, but also of the manufactured goods that developing countries have been encouraged to specialise in and which are now characterised by massive over-capacity internationally.The more innovative form of finding new markets in the recent past has been that of creating markets where none previously existed, that is, by encouraging and furthering the commercialisation of activities that were earlier not perceived as commercial, or were defined in the public domain, or were only enabled by social intervention. The push towards commercialisation and then privatisation of a range of public services; such as power, telecommunication, and now water and sanitation is the most obvious expression of this. The proliferation of new forms of commerce has never been so rampant. Knowledge and what is defined as intellectual property, rights to energy use, pollution control certificates, all are now subject to trading; and even the via media for trade have expanded to include e-commerce and the like.

The forced commercialisation of a wide range of services therefore provides the newest and most promising hinterland for capitalist expansion.One aspect of this is also that information and entertainment have themselves become not just commercialised but have emerged as major industries; indeed, they are now the fastest-growing segments of the global economy. They are also among the most concentrated and centralised of all sectors. The multimedia boom has spawned large multimedia companies which can now be counted among the largest multinational corporations. This is really a phenomenon of the last decade, as giant media firms have sought synergy through not just vertical integration but by effectively acquiring control of every step in the mass media process, from creation of content to its delivery in the home as argued by media critic Ben Bagdikian. The 1990s witnessed an unprecedented wave of mergers and acquisitions among global media giants. As a result, the top six multinational conglomerates News Corporation, Time Warner, Disney, Bertelsmann, Viacom and TCI now effectively own and control huge swathes of the media, publishing and commercial entertainment activities across the world. Many of these firms have explicitly rejected national identities and posited themselves as global or internationally-based corporations.

Nevertheless, and despite the attempts to programme according to local sensibilities, the bulk of the content, the forms of expression as well as the structures of ownership and management, reflect the domination of the core capitalist countries, especially the United States. In sheer quantitative terms, the most important new markets are of course the financial ones, and the explosion of financial activity reflects the ability of capitalism to create and enlarge the spheres of economic activity even where material production is flagging. In addition, financial services such as banking and insurance, an area in which companies based in the core capitalist countries clearly have competitive advantage have been among the fastest-growing areas of world trade.

The huge cross-border and intra-border flow of financial resources often reflects trade in commodities that are purely notional, such as derivatives trading. That huge profits can be made from this pyramiding of financial assets reflects the ingenuity of capitalism, but it also marks speculative bubbles, which do have to burst eventually.In addition, the new imperialism seeks to make use of the skilled labour that is found in some developing countries. This has meant greatly enhanced labour mobility of a small section of highly skilled and professional workers, even as other labour finds it much more difficult to move, and aggregate rates of labour migration are lower than they have been in the history of capitalism. This in turn has contributed in no small measure to the enthusiasm for the process of global integration among such groups of skilled workers in developing countries. In fact, it can be argued that one important reason for the success of imperialist globalisation has been its ability to draw local elites and middle classes across the world into its own ranks, to offer part inclusion into a privileged international space within which the travails of the local working poor can be forgotten, even while their crucial role in generating productive surplus is sustained.

Predator and the prey Despite the appearance of complete domination by a single and determined superpower, which has been a requirement for periods of stable world capitalism in the past, the current world economy is an unstable one, which is prone to systemic instability and constant possibility of crisis. This emerges from many factors.First, the US is not currently fulfilling its role of leader in the world economy to maintain stability. Such a role, as argued by the economist Charles Kindleberger, requires the fulfilment of three functions at a minimum: discounting in crisis; counter-cyclical lending to countries affected by private investors, decisions; and providing a market for net exports of the rest of the world, especially those countries required to repay debt. The absence of discounting in crisis is not universal; there are countries that have received large bailouts orchestrated by the US Treasury and the IMF. But the spectacular collapse of Argentina, the bleeding of Sub-Saharan Africa despite impending large-scale famine, and the indifference to implosions in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, bear witness to the fact that the US administration does not see its responsibility to discount during times of crisis in terms of salvaging the larger system. Similarly, counter-cyclical lending has been discouraged, as private finance (including portfolio capital) has been associated with creating sharp boom-and-bust cycles rather than mitigating them, and US policy has been geared towards protecting such behaviour rather than repressing it.

Finally, while the US did play a crucial role as the engine of world trade by running very large external trade deficits in the 1990s, that role has been much diminished after 2000. Indeed, even before then, the import surplus in the US reflected private investment-savings deficits, as the governments budgetary role became more contractionary.Second, partlybecause of this inadequately accepted role of the leader, and partly because of the deflationary impulse provided by the greater mobility of finance capital, aggregate growth in the world capitalist system has been far below expectations in the recent phase of globalisation. It is now clear that the period has been associated with a deceleration of economic activity in much of the developed world, a continuing implosion in vast areas of the developing world including the continent of Africa, and a dramatic downslide in what had hitherto been the most dynamic segment of the world economy East and Southeast Asia. The rate of global output growth, which averaged three percent in 1990-97, was less than half that in 1998-2000, and even worse subsequently. Nearly 40 countries have experienced a decline in per capita income since 1990.

These processes are reflected in rates of growth of world trade (in value terms), which have decelerated despite the enforced liberalisation of trade in most countries, as well as in declining rates of greenfield investment (involving the setting up of physical plant, equipment etc) across the world.Third, the recent process of imperialist globalisation has been marked by greatly increased disparities, both within countries and between countries. The gap in per capita income between the industrial and developing worlds has more than tripled between 1960 and 1990. Between 1960 and 1991, the income share of the richest 20 percent of the worlds population rose from 70 percent to 85 percent, while the income share of the poorest 20 percent of population fell from 2.3 percent to 1.4 percent. In fact, the income shares of more than 85 percent of the worlds population actually fell over this period.

The ratio of shares of the richest to the poorest groups doubled from 30:1 to 60:1. Subsequent data indicate a marked worsening of such disparities.
While there is inevitably a debate over this, most careful studies find increased inequality within and across regions, as well as a stubborn persistence of poverty, and a marked absence of the convergence predicted by apologists of the system. In addition, the majority of the people across the world find themselves in more fragile and vulnerable economic circumstances, in which many of the earlier welfare state provisions have been reduced or removed, public services have been privatised or made more expensive and therefore less accessible, and employment conditions have become much more insecure and volatile.Fourth, these features in themselves have led to a major crisis of legitimisation for the system.

Not only are the basic tenets of the neo-liberal argument (which forms the theoretical support for the current pattern of imperialist globalisation) under question, but increasingly the institutions which serve to uphold it (the IMF, the WTO and so on lack popular support and legitimacy. The anti-globalisation umbrella movement is one expression of such growing dissent in local and national contexts. One important and new feature, is that the process of integrating elites from developing countries, and rewarding them materially for their active cooperation in furthering corporate globalisation, has slowed down.

The complicity and participation of local elites has been a potent force in ensuring the success of global capitalist integration but as the world recession bites and rewards become more scarce, such complicity can no longer be taken for granted. Since the political economy of resistance movements everywhere requires the involvement of at least some middle class and professional elements and often some local elites as well, this may prove to be a critical development.
Fifth, imperialism has an increasingly ambiguous relationship with various backward-looking, revanchist and reactionary tendencies in different parts of the world. At different times and places, such tendencies have been encouraged and allowed to spread, but increasingly many of them are now seen as threats to the system, to be rooted out and destroyed. All of those currently seen as enemies of the US and therefore as the objects of attrition in the current war against terror Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda and the Taliban, Saddam Husseinhave been at one time or the other overt or covert factotums of the US administration, used against other perceived enemies or simply to destabilise regions.

Even now, in clientelist regimes such as that in Saudi Arabia, reactionary forces have been allowed to grow.Elsewhere, US imperialism has turned a blind eye or even implicitly encouraged the growth of semi-fascist movements (such as the Hindutva tendencies in India) as well as separatist forces, which encourage the disintegration of large nations. However, many of these movements now threaten to spin out of control and to destabilise the system itself, even if only partially. The terrorist attacks of September 2001 mark a watershed only insofar as they forced a realisation of this tendency towards destabilisation; they do not mark any major changes in the basic organisation of the system itself, which is still run as cynically as before.Finally, one important contradiction that looks likely to become more significant in the near future is the requirement of deflation, which predatory finance capital imposes on the system as a whole even while it encourages differential rates of deflation in different areas so as to maximise its own profits.

A sustainable prey-predator relation requires the continued existence of the prey, but widespread deflation makes this less likely. The current downslide in the major equity markets, and especially in the US, suggests that while finance can be separated from real economic trends for extended periods, and can even profit from such separation, it cannot do so indefinitely.All this means that, while the world capitalist system may not yet be in full-fledged crisis (even though parts of it clearly are) there are systemic instabilities, which suggest that the current pattern cannot continue without some changes or even substantial overhaul in the medium term.South Asian supporting cast.

The South Asian region (broadly interpreted to include the region from Afghanistan to Burma) has become very important for the imperialist core, and in particular the United States. While South Asia,s economic significance may appear to be weaker than some of the other regions in terms of both markets and resources, this is not completely true. The Indian economy is viewed as a major market for a range of consumer goods, and even the limits of that market given the prevailing income distribution have not completely diminished expectations. In addition, there are large possibilities in terms of introducing commercialisation and the possibility of private profit generation into activities that have not previously been treated as commercial in India, either because of lack of development or because of the role played by the public sector.

Between 1960 and 1991, the income share of the richest 20 percent of the world,s population rose from 70 percent to 85 percent, while the income share of the poorest 20 percent of population fell from 2.3 percent to 1.4 percent.There are other sources of interest in South Asia. Geopolitically, the region is viewed both in terms of its capacity (especially India) to assist in the containment of the potential power of China, and as a means of providing access to the oil and mineral resources of Central Asia and the Bay of Bengal area. The region is also the location of the struggle for control over other, newer forms of economic territory, such as certain types of skilled labour.The economies of South Asia and especially India are often portrayed in comparative discussion as among the success stories of the developing world in the period since the early 1990s.

The sense that the Indian economy performed relatively well during this period may simply reflect the much more depressing or chaotic experiences in the rest of the developing world, with the spectacular financial crises in several of the most important and hitherto dynamic late industrialisers in East Asia and Latin America, and the continuing stagnation or even decline in much of the rest of the South. In comparison, the Indian economy, and indeed most of the smaller economies of the region, were largely stable and have been spared the type of extreme crisis that became almost a typical feature of emerging markets elsewhere. But the picture of improved performance is a misleading one at many levels, since in fact both India and the entire South Asian region as a whole experienced economic growth which was less impressive than the preceding decade. Further, across the region this growth pattern was marked by low employment generation, greater income inequality and the persistence of poverty. In other words, despite some very apparent successes in certain sectors or pockets, on the whole the process of global economic integration did little to dramatically improve the material condition of most of the population.In India, the rate of growth of aggregate GDP in constant prices was between 5.5 percent and 5.8 percent in each five-year period since 1980, and the process of accelerated liberalisation of trade and capital markets did not lead to any change from this overall pattern. Further, while investment ratios increased (as a share of GDP), this reflected the long-term secular trend, and in fact the rate of increase decelerated compared to earlier periods.

More significantly, the period since 1990 has been marked by very low rates of employment generation. Rural employment in the period 1993-94 to 1999-2000 grew at the very low annual rate of less than 0.6 percent per annum, lower than any previous period in post-independence history, and well below (only one-third) the rate of growth of rural population. Urban employment growth, at 2.3 percent per annum, was also well below that of earlier periods, and employment in the formal sector stagnated. The only positive feature was the decline in educated unemployment, largely related to the expansion of IT-enabled services in metropolitan and other urban areas. However, while this feature, along with that of software development, has received much international attention, it is still very insignificant in the aggregate economy. Other indicators of the Indian economy point to disturbing changes in patterns of consumption. Thus, per capita foodgrain consumption declined from 476 grams per day in 1990 to only 418 grams per day in 2001. The National Sample Survey data also suggest that even aggregate calorific consumption per capita declined from just over 2200 calories per day in 1987-88 to around 2150 in 1999-2000.

It has been argued that this may represent the positive diversification of consumption away from foodgrain that is associated with higher living standards. But, usually the aggregate foodgrain consumption does not decline due to indirect consumption (for example, through meat and poultry that require feed).

In any case, the overall decline in calorific consumption (covering all food products) suggests that the optimistic conclusion may not be valid. Given the aggregate growth rates and the evidence of improved lifestyles among a minority, this points to substantially worsening income distribution in India, which is also confirmed by the survey data. While the evidence on poverty has been muddied by changes in the procedure of data collection, which have made the recent survey data non-comparable with earlier estimates, overall indicators suggest that while the incidence of head-count poverty had been declining from the mid-1970s to 1990, subsequently that decline has been slowed or halted, as indicated by the economist Abhijit Sen. Meanwhile, declining capital expenditure by the government has been associated with more infrastructural bottlenecks and worsening provision of basic public services.

The major positive feature which is frequently cited, that of the overall stability of the growth process compared to the boom-and-bust cycles in other emerging markets, reflects the relatively limited extent of capital account liberalisation over much of the period, and the fact that the Indian economy was never really the chosen favourite of international financial markets over this period. In other words, because it did not receive large inflows of speculative capital, it did not suffer from large outflows either. Meanwhile, stability to e balance of payments was imparted by the substantial inflows of workers remittances from temporary migrant workers in the Gulf and other regions.

In other countries of the region, the economic growth experience subsequent to liberalisation has been even less impressive in most cases. In Pakistan, average annual growth rates plummeted in the 1990s compared to that of the earlier decade, by about one-third. Industrial growth rates almost halved from 8.2 percent to 4.8 percent per annum. The earlier success at reducing poverty was reversed in the 1990s, as the percentage of households living in absolute poverty increased from 21.4 percent in 1990-91 to 32.6 percent in 1998-99. Unemployment rose, real wages fell and income distribution worsened. All this occurred in a climate of much greater macroeconomic instability than in the past.
Per capita foodgrain consumption in India declined from 476 grams per day in 1990 to only 418 grams per day in 2001 In Bangladesh, while aggregate growth rates over the 1990s were marginally higher than in the earlier decade, the overall incidence of poverty (at around 45 percent of the population) has been stubbornly resistant to change. Indeed, the rate of poverty reduction slowed down after 1994-95 because of both lower growth of production and lower employment generation. Industrial growth was positively affected by the expansion of the export-oriented textile sector (taking advantage of previously unutilised multilateral multi-fibre arrangementMFA quotas) but other than textiles and garments, most manufacturing sectors have stagnated or declined. All the productive sectors have been adversely affected by trade liberalisation in India, given the porous border, which allows for the possibility of substantial smuggling. Thus import penetration has adversely affected production and employment in both agriculture and most manufacturing, and even sectors of rural economic diversification such as livestock and poultry rearing. Income distribution worsened over the 1990s.

The economy of Nepal has been affected by Indian trade liberalisation because of its open border with India. Growth in the productive sectors has been weak, especially in agriculture where the removal of subsidies was not accompanied by public investment in rural infrastructure. In Sri Lanka, relatively low growth in the 1990s (especially in the agricultural sector) was associated with high macroeconomic imbalances, high trade deficits and reduced employment generation. Domestic political strife and the state of war in the Sri Lankan north and east were only partly responsible for this; an important role was played by the decline in value of agricultural exports, the mainstay of Sri Lankas economy.This has been the dismal record of the South Asian economic performance in the age of globalised liberalisation. The constant hectoring for more liberalisation and the habit of attributing failures to inadequate reform, either wittingly or unwittingly, fails to take note of the very obvious adverse consequences of the process that has been unleashed so far. Ways of Indian capitalThroughout the region of South Asia, the process of increased integration with the global economy was not associated with higher GDP growth or more productive employment generation, or improved performance in terms of poverty reduction.

Rather, employment possibilities became more fragile and there were clear income distributional shifts towards increased inequality. In all the countries, the combination of attempts to impose fiscal disciplineby cutting public expenditure resulted in adverse consequences for producers as well as reduced quality and quantity (in per capita terms) of physical infrastructure and basic public services. The loss of revenues from import tariffs, the associated necessary declines in domestic duties, and the need to provide incentives to capital through tax concessions, all led to declines in tax-GDP ratios across the region, further reducing the spending capacity of the states. If such have been the consequences of the process of global integration, adversely affecting the material circumstances of the large majority of citizenry in the region, the question may be asked as to what influenced government policy in all these countries to make the neo-liberal economic strategy so inevitable nonetheless? In other words, what was the domestic political and social support for the process of liberalisation, which made it fit so neatly into the requirements imposed by international imperialism? Obviously, the political economy processes involved are complex and vary from country to country.

But some idea may be had from a more detailed consideration of the Indian experience in particular. One of the interesting features of the political economy of the Indian strategy of liberalising economic reform has been the at first conditional, and subsequently more unqualified, support extended to it by various elements of the large capitalist class and other social groups which have substantial political voice, such as middle class and professional groups. To some extent this can be explained by the proliferation and diversification of the Indian capitalist class that took place during the years of import-substituting growth and later. There were three factors that led to this.

The first was related to the process of introduction of new products and markets. In India, over time there were a number of areas outside the traditional bases of existing monopolistic groups, such as trade, services of various kinds and operations abroad by non-resident Indian groups, which served as sites for the primary accumulation of capital. A typical example is trade, which saw the growth and proliferation of relatively independent capitalist groups, some of which on occasion made relatively successful forays into industrial production, particularly in steel, tyres and cement sectors that have been through periods of shortage, have a burgeoning black market and extremely high margins from trade.

Another example was finance. While the ability of domestic capital to use the financial sector as a site for accumulation was earlier contained by the presence of a large public sector in banking, matters changed substantially from the 1980s, especially when the stock market came into its own. The subsequent periods of speculative boom in the stock market allowed some insiders within the erstwhile financial community to accumulate substantial sums of capital, most often at the expense of the small middle class investor. Over time, groups that had accumulated capital in this fashion sought to diversify into manufacturing, not only by entering new niche markets, but also by investing in large capacities in industries characterised by economies of scale. This created a direct challenge for several of the traditional business groups.

These traditional monopolies had in the past been protected by the barriers to entry created by the governments industrial and trade policies, which involved not just import substitution but also substantial regulation of capacity creation and production. They had therefore been able to hedge against risk by investing small sums embodied in uneconomic plants in each individual industry, given the narrow domestic market base for most manufactured goods.

This meant that they were unable to compete successfully with the new entrants, who because of newer technology were also less averse to import competition.Established big capital, insofar as it could not enter into certain spaces and was not able to take full advantage of the entry of new products, found its relative position worsening in the economy over time. To reverse this decline, it looked for new avenues, including expansion abroad. It is necessary to distinguish here between two different types of expansion abroad.

One is simply expanding activities abroad, which requires little export of capital from the domestic economy since it is largely locally financed. The other involves the export of capital through the non-repatriation of exchange earnings, which, at the very least, involves the acquisition of rentier status, but may help the expansion of activities as well. The non-repatriation of exchange earnings, for a given level of domestic activity being maintained, has to be financed for the economy as a whole through larger international borrowing.The second avenue open to established big business was to move into the space occupied by the public sector or smaller capitalists; and hence they also demanded an opening up of space through industrial deregulation.

This was achieved by the elimination of anti-monopoly legislation, the removal of licensing requirements, the removal of legislation reservingcertain sectors for small capitalists, a regime of high interest rates that squeezed small capitalists, the privatisation of a number of profitable public sector units, and the delinking of the public sector from budgetary support of any kind. In short, even the established big businesses that were, to start with, the beneficiaries of state controls of various kinds, began to chafe against these controls at a certain stage. Hence, large capital extended at least qualified support to the neo-liberal liberalisationprogramme, no matter how uneasy it may have felt about some other aspects of the programme, such as import liberalisation.

Among certain other sections such as the agricultural capitalists, the regime change met with qualified approval, though parts of it were objected to. Agricultural capitalists, while being hostile to the withdrawal of subsidised inputs and directed credit, favourably anticipated the prospect of exporting at advantageous prices in the international market. In the event, a substantial section of domestic capital was willing to make compromises with metropolitan capital on the terms that the latter demanded. It was therefore all for allowing metropolitan capital to capture a share of the Indian market even at the expense of the entrenched capitalists, not to mention the public sector, in the hope of being able to better its own prospects as a junior partner, both in the domestic as well as in the international market.

It was thus in favour of import liberalisation, a full retreat from state interventionism, and accepting the kind of regime that metropolitan capital generally, and the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund as its chief spokespersons, had been demanding.It is true that the more powerful and the more entrenched monopoly houses of India were more circumspect. They would not have minded import liberalisation in areas other than their own, including those dominated by the public sector, would not object to collaborating with foreign capital and thus the relaxation of controls to facilitate the same, but they would not welcome encroachment by metropolitan capital. Their attitude towards neo-liberal economic liberalisation was more ambiguous. Support for liberalisation was growing not just among a section of industrial and agricultural capital. A whole new category of an altogether different kind of businessman was coming up, containing those who were more in the nature of upstarts, international racketeers, fixers, middlemen, often of non-resident Indian origin or having NRI links, often linked to smuggling and the arms trade. Such private agents in any case did not have much of a production base, and their parasitic intermediary status as well as the international value of their operations naturally inclined them towards an open economyAnd finally, one should not exclude a section of the top bureaucracy itself, which had close links with the IMF and the World Bank, either as ex-employees who might return any time to Washington DC, or through being engaged in dollar projects of various kinds, or as hopeful aspirants for a lucrative berth in Washington DC; the weight of this section in the top bureaucracy had been growing rapidly, and its inclination naturally was in the direction of the Washington consensus-style policy regime.

Thus, quite apart from the growing leverage exercised by the international agencies in their capacity as donorsthe internal contradictions of the earlier economic policy regime generated increasing support within the powerful and affluent sections of society for changing this regime in the manner desired by these agencies.Besides this support from large corporate capital, the large and politically powerful urban middle classes, along with more prosperous rural farming groups, whose real incomes increased in the consumption-led boom of the 1980s, actively began to desire access to international goods and gave potency to the demands for trade liberalisation. And of course, the technological and media revolutions, especially the growing importance of satellite television, imparted a significant impetus to the international demonstration effect, which further fuelled liberalising and consumerist demands. One important social change, which was arguably influential in creating pressures for the shift in macroeconomic strategy, was the accelerated globalisation of a section of Indian society.

Apart from the media, one major instrument of this was the post-war Indian diaspora. The NRI phenomenon by means of which a qualitatively significant number of people from the Indian elites and middle classes actually became resident abroad, contributed in no small measure to consumerist demands for opening up the economy. The importance of non-resident Indians was not only because they were viewed as potentially important sources of capital inflow, but also because of their close links with (which in many cases made them almost indistinguishable from) dominant groups within the domestically resident society.While the liberalising reforms failed in the aggregative sense and also in terms of delivering better conditions for most of the Indian population, there was anticipated and achieved a definite improvement in material conditions for a substantial section of the upper and middle classes. Since these groups had a political voice that was far greater than their share of population, they were able to influence economic strategy to their own material advantage. It is in this sense that local elites and middle classes were not only complicit in the process of integration with the global economy, but active proponents of the process. The streak of venom.

While the neo-liberal economic reform programme entailed a changed relationship of the government with economy and polity, it was not a withdrawal of the state so much as a change in the character of the association. Thus, while the state effectively reneged on many of its basic obligations in terms of providing its citizens access to minimum food, housing, health and education, state actions remained crucial to the way in which markets functioned and the ability of capital to pursue its different goals. Government and bureaucracy remained crucial to economic functioning at the end of the decade of reforms; in fact the overall context was one of greater centralisation of economic and financial power. Many had believed that a ‘retreat of the state’ and the exposure of the economy to the discipline of the market would cut out arbitrariness of decision-making and the corruption that is inevitably associated with it. It would streamline the functioning of the economy by making it a rule-governed system though admittedly the rules of the market.

What happened instead in the Indian economy during this period of neo-liberal structural adjustment was an increase in the level of corruption, cronyism, and arbitrariness to unprecedented levels. The privatisation exercise became another vehicle of primitive accumulation by private capital as it acquired public assets cheaply. Precious natural resources, hitherto kept inside the public sector, were handed over for a pittance (and alleged kickbacks to private firms with dubious objectives. With the wider corruption that increasingly pervaded the system, the discipline of the market proved to be a chimera.

The privatisation exercise became another vehicle of primitive accumulation by private capital as it acquired public assets cheaply. Across the South Asian region, indeed, and not confined only to India, the period has witnessed an increase not only in levels of open corruption but also in a decline in substantive democracy and acceptance of basic socio-economic rights of citizens. While the formal denial of democracy has been more limited (as in Pakistan) across the region, the states have in effect become more centralising and more authoritarian in certain ways, even as their ability to control events and processes becomes more tenuous.It could be argued that the centralised, centralising and increasingly authoritarian state is in fact a necessary requirement for this type of liberalisation which is based more on external legitimisation (from foreign financiers and the perceived discipline of international markets) than on internal legitimacy derived from the support of the majority of its citizens. Such a change in the nature of the state may therefore be a fallout of the substantially increased income inequalities associated with liberalisation and the social and political processes that they unleash.

These inequalities have accentuated certain longer-term structural features of South Asian societies, whereby more privileged groups have sought to perpetuate and increase their control over limited resources and channels of income generation in the economy. This in turn has involved the effective economic disenfranchisement of large numbers of people, including those who occupied particular physical spaces in rural areas, or were urban slum dwellers who constituted both the reserve army of labour for industrialisation and the most fertile source of labour supply for extra-legal activities. The basic disregard for rule of law which has characterised economic functioning in most parts of South Asia over several decades, became even more pronounced in this period, with both economic and other lawlessness becoming accepted features pervading all aspect of civil society, and allowed everything even the rights of citizens to become marketable and negotiable. Meanwhile ordinary citizens tended to experience reduced civil liberties and security along with worsening socio-economic rights, which may even have been necessary to allow the more centralised state to direct particular forms of lawlessness to the benefit of powerful agents and groups.

These concomitant trends of greater economic and financial centralisation and increased income inequality in turn operated to aggravate the various regional, fissiparous and community-based tensions that have become such a defining feature of South Asian societies and polities. One of the features of the region as a whole has been an increase in the degree of instability and the growing absence of security. It has been reflected not only in greater cross-border tension, as between India and Pakistan, but also in civil- and communally-inspired clashes within national boundaries. These conflicts both emerge from the prevailing material contradictions and contribute to them. They also serve the very important political economy use (for the states concerned) of distracting people from the real and pressing issues resulting from the government denial of basic economic responsibility, and serve to direct anger in other less potentially threatening directions. Obviously, not all such tension has had a direct and monocausal material underpinning.

Nevertheless, it is true that the combination of greater material insecurity in terms of both lower real incomes and more precarious employment opportunities for a very large section of the population, with the explosion of conspicuous consumption on the part of a relatively small but highly visible minority, can have very adverse social and political consequences.

The frustration that may arise because of the gap between aspiration and reality for growing numbers of people in the system can be only too easily directed towards any apparent or potential competitor in such a system, or even to those who are not in competition but simply represent a group that can be attacked with relative ease.

The streak of venom that has been periodically directed towards various minority groups across the region can be seen as one expression of this trend. The inability to confront those who are responsible for the system, or actually benefiting from it, or even the lack of desire to confront these much more powerful elements, given that they still have the power to distribute some amount of material largesse, has meant that they could not become the direct objects of any aggressive vent for frustration. Rather, the outlet was increasingly found in terms of growing antagonism, increasingly finding violent expression, towards other categories of people who are nearer home, closer in terms of lifestyle and more susceptible to such attack. It is worth noting that often these groups are already the most disadvantaged and materially weak sections of society.There is the broader international context to this, which is particularly reflective of this phase of imperialist globalisation.

Across the world, in both developed and developing countries, there is a greater tendency on the part of the rulers, and those who are privileged in society, to ignore the interests of the majority and to blatantly push for those policies that will only benefit a small minority. The rise of finance capital and the hugely powerful role played by speculative capital in determining the fortunes of even large industrial countries has made this even sharper. Increasingly, governments point to the threat of capital flight as the reason why they cannot undertake basic measures for the welfare of most of the citizens, since anything that involves more expenditure for the people is inherently viewed with disfavour by international capital.Of course, this international tendency then has its counterpart in each national economy, as particular groups that actually benefit from the process seek to establish that there is no alternative.

Which is why we have the spectacle of local elites and governments not just advocating, but also able to continue to push through, policies that are likely to be to the detriment of most of the people. The situation is neither inevitable nor permanent, however, and the contradictions in the global system that were outlined earlier in this paper mean that even in particular regions, forces that will instigate change are likely to surface.